The Son Always Rises, but the Daughter Sleeps In: A tale of OPB*

*Other People's Boogers

Thursday, August 07, 2008

Farewell sick-y cat

There was a sick cat lurking in my neighborhood. He was badly injured. The skin on his neck was hanging off of him. He lurked in my back yard and I would feed him because he was hungry and homeless and needed a friend. Whittemore seemed to like him and seemed to bring him around.

But he kept getting sicker, and his neck kept looking worse. So, the good folks at Somerville Animal Control lent me a trap and I caught him. But they said that he was too far gone to be rehabilitated, and they humanely put him to sleep. The infection from his wound had spread through his body. He never had a chance.

Poor little dude.

In other news, we paid our last tuition fee at Eric's preschool and we are so looking forward to the free-ness of the public preschool. I'm a bit bummed about not sending him to kindergarten, because I really think he's ready. But he'll be OK. Maybe he'll be a bit bored with the extra year of school, but I don't think it will hurt him. He's going to be 5 in three weeks and I keep having flasbacks to my time in the hospital with him as a newborn:

Rich, up seeing a tiny butt smashed with tarry-black meconium shouting "Dude! Look what you did. That's so AWESOME" and cleaning it up.

Rich coming back after watching his bath and keeping him company in the "toaster" that they put new babies in to warm them up, "and he's got this white shock of blond hair that sticks straight up!"

Walking him around the hospital room with absolutely no idea how to comfort him and singing "Goodnight moonlight babies, rockabye sweet baby dude..." to something approximating the tune as James Taylor wrote it.

Saying "Open up big bird!" over and over again as we figured out the breast feeding thing

He is such a good kid. One random thing about his broken arm. It modified his brain. See, E's never been really into artwork. He'd always rather build lego towers or make complex train tracks than paint a picture. Then he broke his right arm and became, by necessity, left handed and suddenly my entire driveway is full of chalk flowers, roads and bridges, clouds and rain. He paints rainbows and makes us cut out hearts for him to fill with bright waxy crayon colors.

Somebody should do a study on linear kids who suddenly can't use their right arms. I think it would tell us a lot about the human brain.

That's it for now. I've been a bad blogger lately, but I think I'm back now. Even if this post was a bit random...

About Me

My name is Margaret, but people that knew me before 1988 usually call me Meg. I grew up in The People's Republic of Cambridge and I used to live next door in Somerville. (Which is much cooler than Cambridge these days despite a conspicuous lack of public green-space). I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1992, and to this day I have mixed feelings about that. I I'm married to a fabulously handsome and kind man and I have 2 really neat kids. We also have 2 cats and live in a Victorian in Melrose with a huge porch. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world most of the time. I have a lot of love and stability in my life. It may be unearned, but it is reciprocated and appreciated.